Samsung Electronics is going to spend additional US$500 million on its memory chip plant currently under construction in Xi'an, China, as reported by The Korea Herald on September 12. The decision will drive the project's total investment upward to US$7.5 billion, making it Samsung's single largest overseas investment in chip plant. As part of the company's effort to diversify its production lines, the semiconductor fab, which broke ground in September 2012 and is slated for operation sometime in 2014, will use 10-nm class process technology to make NAND flash memory chips for smartphones and tablets. Meanwhile, Samsung also inaugurated a new R&D center – the company's eighth R&D center in China - in Xi'an on the same day, according to the report.